During recent decades, antenna technology has experienced an increase in the use of antennas that utilize an array of antenna elements, one example of which is a phased array antenna, such as an active electronically scanned array. Antennas of this type have many applications in commercial and defense markets, such as communications and radar systems. In many of these applications, especially for radar systems used in aircraft, light weight and compactness are important.
Attempts to achieve lightweight antennas have sometimes used a “tile” approach where the various functions required for the array are implemented in a multilayer circuit board, which also contains layers for the transmit/receive modules and antenna radiators. However, this results in a highly complex and costly phased array antenna.